This is because when the product is packed, the maker doesn't know if it's going to NI or GB or Timbuctoo.
Government negotiators and ministers had agreed with the EU that these labels would appear on the box (and for meat, meat products, milk and dairy products on each individual pack) which says "Not for EU" and every shelf where the goods are for sale needed to carry the same message alongside the price tag.
Last month, food trade lobby groups were warning the added costs would be about £250 million a year and were threatening legal action unless the government comes up with some alternative arrangements.
Now we can see this down to to the individual company level and it carries a warning.
Graham’s Family Dairy Ltd isn’t a small business. Based in Stirling, it employs 642 people and last year had a turnover of £152m. GFD produces milk, cream, yoghurt, butter and so on and I assume most of its sales are through supermarkets. I say this because last year it made a loss of £1.5m and the year before it made a small profit of £1.2m on a £126m turnover. Supermarkets don't allow their suppliers to make very much money.
One of the owners, Robert Graham, speaking to the BBC's Farming Today programme, said that the proposed changes are going to cost his company £300,000 before even considering the cost of labour time, complexity and additional running costs.
According to Dairy UK, the trade body for the dairy sector, the financial cost per business of changing labelling alone has been quoted as up to £500,000, and up to £2 million per business when factoring in all other costs. A report in The Herald in Scotland goes on:
"For us, this is going to change the way we do things for millions of units every week, which is clearly a huge cost for a family firm," Mr Graham said.
"The proposed requirement means that we would have to have different packaging between UK and export lines, leading to higher costs across stock, production, branding and operations.
“The new requirements would add unjustified complexity while there is already an overwhelming feeling across the industry that it would make no difference to export trade to Northern Ireland.
"The food industry understands the complexities of politics but we can’t help but feel this legislation will do nothing for the industry but confuse consumers, increase complexity and heighten costs by millions for the sector.”
The key point is where he says the firm would need "different packaging between UK and export lines".
When first announced the labelling applied only to goods sold in NI but the government clearly recognised the problem and launched a consultation in February this year on making the rule apply more generally across the whole UK. This is a bit late since the labels now appear everywhere anyway. Producers simply took matter into their own hands and decided it was the easiest option.
But any company exporting to the EU will need to invest in separate lines or have already done so. Others will abandon EU exports altogether. Graham's Family Dairy is a prime example. It isn't massively profitable and may not export that much to Europe. Faced with a significant investment in another packaging line, what would you do?
The decision will turn on how big a proportion of your turnover and profit comes from EU countries. And since the government has made it more costly to trade with the EU, especially for food products, one imagines that business is even less profitable than it was before Brexit.
In The Guardian, they report the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which represents more than 1,000 manufacturers, has written to the Cabinet Office minister, Steve Baker, saying the labelling plans "would hit exports and could lead to higher food prices."
The point of all this is that it all stems from the first decision in June 2016, made by people who had zero idea what they were doing or how it would impact their own lives and in many cases, livelihoods.
Johnson, who also didn't have a clue what he was doing, then compounded the problem by treating Northern Ireland as dispensable and agreeing to the Northern Ireland Protocol. That didn't work for Unionists so Sunak had a go and came up with the revised NIP known as the Windsor Framework with the "Not for EU" labelling plan. I bet he didn't ask anybody before agreeing to it and as a former banker he wouldn't know a packaging line from a railway line.
Now, lots of companies will give up on exporting to a market of 450 million consumers in order to be able satisfy a minority of the 1.6 million living in the six counties of Ulster.
It makes no sense but you can see how a succession of bad decisions, each taken by people who had little idea of the consequences, and made for expediency alone, is leading to disaster for a lot of companies at a time when the government is exhorting industry to expand and grow.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
